“Is it my turn? Yeah, it’s my turn,” he said, like a drumbeat rolling across a field.

Liu Sheng stood and brushed off gray dust, ash lifting like winter frost on a sleeve.

“Then, let’s start with a Falling Stone Spell,” he announced, a stone dropping like a mountain’s heartbeat.

—KLANG! The conjured rock appeared point‑blank, smashed Part2’s wing, and Lu Yao fell like a hawk clipped mid‑flight.

Midair, she generated peripherals that wrapped her limbs; palm and sole thrusters hissed as she skimmed the air like a dragonfly in rain, dodging two Flame Burst Spells.

She hit ground hard; the shelling shattered like surf breaking thin porcelain.

“That’s more like it—I hate being looked down on, especially by women,” he snarled, pride bristling like a raised quill.

Once, Lu Yao would’ve said nothing, circled with backup guns like a wolf around fire, tried to force his limit, drain his mana bar dry.

A small spark flickered inside; words flowed out like spring water from dark rock. “Then how do you see Miss Gu Xiangshi?”

Catch the logic gap, strike with speech, open a new door—tricks she once disdained like dust on a blade.

Yet Yekase had laid a snare earlier, subtle as a fox’s track in fresh snow.

It’s not only Flash Energy that evolves; as a PeaceWarrior she’d spent her old arsenal like autumn leaves shed. Time to step onto new growth like a sprout breaking soil.

Her face twitched into a stiff, foreign shape, and ice‑thin muscles cracked to show water—Lu Yao was smiling.

Then, stack the clues like stones into a cairn and count them.

Several times, when Liu Sheng triggered a reflection spell, he made a move like a swallow banking into wind.

He moved into the RPG’s path the first time—clean arc, clean rebound, like billiards under lamplight.

After that, she set fall points front and back, left and right, four winds crossing—then a grand cross Alpha, like axes drawn in frost.

He couldn’t cover all shells; he lunged somewhere senseless like a startled deer, and that was when damage bit like a cold blade.

To dodge those waves, he had to dive and throw himself, yet pain still struck; in that scramble hid a cracked keel of a weakness.

Lu Yao dropped a smoke grenade at her feet; soot rolled out like ink spilling across rice paper.

Twin Towers City has a merc named “Ghost in the Smoke,” said to carve a squad with one blade like a shark in murk. Lu Yao wasn’t that ghost; she raised an energy shield like a lantern under fog and thought hard.

Liu Sheng was a mage; he didn’t know if she’d iron‑fist his brow, so he stayed out of the smoke and tossed Flame Burst Spells blind, fireballs wandering like lost fireflies.

Most shots veered; a few struck and silver streams rippled on the shield like moonlight on steel, but Lu Yao didn’t flinch.

What’s the essence of a reflection spell, the mirror’s root like a still lake?

What do the hurting waves share, the common grain like rings in wood?

Left and right, front and back, the four winds, then a cross like a snowflake’s arms.

It’s symmetry, crisp as a lattice of ice.

She’d used Omega Ray too long; her mind leaned toward Infinite Power, toward order’s will like constellations set in glass. Without trying, she set symmetric fall points like paired stars.

Liu Sheng fled symmetric attacks; a shift twenty degrees forward‑diagonal broke the pattern like a cracked mirror, and the spell needed that break to live. Maybe opposite axes canceled to zero like balanced scales, so the reflection failed to see a net force.

Continue testing, like tapping stones across a river.

Next attack mode—

“Generate Peripheral,” she said, voice calm as a blade laid flat.

Her right hand grasped, yet blue‑white light didn’t bloom in her hand or behind; she spent more rays and moved the generation coordinate outward like planting a star seed far away.

The smoke thinned, and Lu Yao held a steady half‑crouch like a tigress coiled in grass.

She cradled a black rifle—night folded into wood, matte and patient.

Huaxia‑made “anti‑hostage” rifle, QB88, a shadow with a bite like midnight frost.

“You figured it out… that gun looks scary,” Liu Sheng laughed, brittle as sun on granite. “But it can’t pierce my defense! Mirror‑Copy Spell is invincible!”

Lu Yao only wrapped her right shoulder in mechanical shell; she raised the rifle and aimed like a falcon stilling before the dive.

Seeing that absolute aim, a chill wind moved in Liu Sheng’s chest like reeds whispering.

No—something was wrong, sand shifting under his boots like a dune.

He’d blocked wide‑area energy bursts like storms met by glass; a rifle shouldn’t break Mirror‑Copy Spell. Yet a thorn pricked his back like a nettle.

Back?

The 24‑year‑old youth turned his head slowly, hinge creaking like a gate.

Lu Yao stood about fifty meters away; directly opposite behind him, same height, same angle, floated a lump of machinery like a second moon hung in place.

Two mechanical hands… and a QB88 nestled between them like a black branch.

Liu Sheng sidestepped fast, scuttling like a crab from shadow.

Along his line of motion, a second pair of rifle‑bearing hands appeared, rising like posts from a fogged pier.

He braked hard and jumped back‑diagonal like a stag bounding from hounds—

A third, a fourth, a fifth bloomed, and at a pace that almost drained the armory like a river run dry, a circle of countless opposing muzzles formed around his lunges like a crown of black suns.

Almost hopeless, Liu Sheng looked up to his last road—the sky, pale and empty as an unmarked page.

He saw soft blue light spread like a fishing net across the dome.

By the way… when did the energy shield drop like a lid sealing a jar?

“No—you can’t—” he cried, voice fraying like a torn banner.

Lu Yao and every mechanical finger pulled the trigger in the same breath; overlapping shots fused into thunder like a storm cracking stone.

“Protocol: King Meets King,” she said, calm as a seal pressed in wax.

The three fights between wild heroes and Official Heroes weren’t broadcast, yet results updated like tide tables pinned in every harbor.

Soon after Lu Yao returned to the lounge, all of Twin Towers City knew Official Heroes were about to be shaved bald like wheat cut to stubble.

Mechbreaker, famous for brawls and teardown like iron crows picking apart engines, beat Soldier Hero, who fought without machines like a bare‑knuckled oak.

A single member of Beast King Squadron—not the whole pack, just one—beat the Zhongshan Mirror King, shattering pride like glass under heel.

They’d eavesdropped tactics, tried to hide info to gain matchup edges; post‑match, they released vague words like smoke instead of flame, and doubt settled on Official Heroes like dusk.

People’s eyes were clear like winter lakes; Flashblade Red and Beast King Squadron held solid reputations like old banners, and going in‑the‑wild didn’t dim them—it made folks suspect Official Heroes had inside strings like puppets.

The last bout, Flashblade Red versus Flame Lady, should’ve been the headliner like the moon at full. Before it even started, public opinion tilted one way like a field bent by wind.

Flame Lady was the headliner of the first Official Heroes in Twin Towers City, praised after several incidents like lanterns hung on a gate. Her opponent, though, was Flashblade Red.

She’d debuted only months ago and charged every big and small incident like a stormchaser, even rushing to aid other provinces like a runner with wings.

Popularity was an overwhelming wave, and the gap rolled like surf that won’t retreat.

Flame Lady remembered that brief talk that night, remembered the thick mechanical arm that slammed her into the brother tower like a hammer meeting anvil; her face flushed apple‑red, and she stomped the lounge floor like sparks kicked from iron.

“This time… I absolutely won’t lose!” she cried, heat rising like a kiln. “My flames will burn fiercer, hotter, like a sun forced through stone!”

On the deck of the Ambition Divine Ship’s alchemy sky‑island, starlight hung like frost.

“Who are you?” asked Liu RuoYuan, voice clean as a bell over water.

Yekase froze, not from confusion but from the touch—two hands reached to the crown of her head and pinched something like leaves on a stem.

She didn’t favor hair accessories; too troublesome, like pins in a coil.

The touch wasn’t jewelry; it felt like something grown, soft as moss where stone meets stream.

Yekase raised her hands and overlapped Liu RuoYuan’s; her fingers found them like a blind path finding rail.

Soft, furry, two cat ears, velvet‑warm like new buds.

“…Huh?” she breathed, surprise blooming like smoke from a match.

How could that be, she thought, the question hanging like mist.

Liu RuoYuan had expected her shock; she spoke on, steady as a teacher’s chalk. “The Beast King Squadron’s body changes happened the night before last, a tide shifting under fur.”

“And since yesterday, you’ve been busy with it, running like a fox on errands.”

“Yeah…” Yekase murmured, voice small as a moth.

“Then did you check yourself?” Liu RuoYuan asked, words clear like rain on tile.

“Me? I didn’t change,” Yekase said, denial thin as paper.

“Really?” The single word rang like a pebble dropped in a well.

Really? The thought curled in her chest like steam.

So the change is cat ears on my head, she wondered, the realization flickering like a candle.

“The changes you missed, I kept a list like knots on a rope. I’ll read them,” Liu RuoYuan said, calm as a ledger.

“First, your pupils used to glow with flowing red light—now they’re just ordinary red irises, flat as dry lacquer.”

“Second, you can’t start your personal teleport box, a door that won’t answer its key.”

“Third… just a guess, but we can test now. Go to the living room and see if you can operate the main console,” she said, pointing like a compass.

Yekase ran into the unlit room, panel waking like a firefly.

“There’s a response,” she called, hope sprouting like grass.

“Tap confirm on the change,” Liu RuoYuan said, her silhouette a dark blade in the doorway.

Click. [Error. User permission insufficient.] The message fell like a red stamp on a sealed letter.

“But you’re working the incident hard, and your moves and habits match Yekase like a shadow matching a body—things no ordinary person can mimic,” Liu RuoYuan said, words steady as river stones.

“Right, ordinary folk can’t,” she went on, eyes cool as dawn. “But what if it’s that presence that can copy even animal fur and warmth, breath for breath like a mirror of flesh?”

“What if, during reshaping, it triggered a racial gift, copying memory and thought so completely that even it believes it’s Yekase?” Her conclusion laid itself like cards in a fan.

The seven‑year‑old girl turned her head, slow as a lily facing sun.

Her quiet pupils looked like two panes of glass; doorway light painted vivid crimson, yet Infinite Power’s living color wouldn’t return, a river absent from its bed.

Thus the puzzle clicked, every piece set like tiles in a courtyard.

No fear, no panic, no anger beat inside it; like a damned detective, it assembled clues by instinct and paved a road to truth like stones laid to a shrine.

And it felt joy at the correct answer, bright as a bell.

Two bodies changed in a pair, mirrored like twin leaves.

A professor’s one‑use spell shield, thin and sure like silk over steel.

A surveillance lens somewhere unseen, an eye in the rafters like an owl at dusk.

That presence—inside Valhalla at the time—on her legs before sleep, on her back after waking like a shadow keeping step. Eyes followed and were ignored like rain on a hood.

“Meow,” it said, soft as a drop.

Rice Rice crawled out of Yekase’s satchel, whiskers glinting like silver threads.

Most cats reflect green light in the dark, but Siamese reflect red, a small fact like a seed tucked in memory.

Now she knew it was true, bone‑deep as cold. In the dimness, those eyes watching her reflected metallic crimson like molten copper held in glass.